
Loading summary
A
Trump just signed an executive order demanding that the crypto industry and fintechs get access to the Fed. And I have to clear my throat. Will this be the final catalyst that finally gets the market moving or just another story that's forgotten? In a matter of days we're going to unpack this and more importantly everything that's happening with the market with Mike Alfred. Let's go, let's go, Let's go. Morning everybody. Had a serious frog in my throat getting started there. I'm gonna go ahead and bring on Mike. Good morning, how are you?
B
Good morning sir. Good.
A
I'm good. I think you bought a few shares, few shares are backed this week.
B
Yes. I purchased 585000 shares in the open market on Friday, 365 on Friday, 220 on Monday and then put out a, a form for. Obviously I'm a board member there, but that makes Alpine Fox LP my affiliate entity, one of the largest shareholders in Bakkt, right above Vanguard. I think it's number five on the institutional shareholder list. So I just think the company is turning around nicely and like you want to be in the stable Coin Payments neo banking space. I think in the coming years I think that whole space is gonna heat up quite a bit and you know, backs a turnaround. But once it gets turned around, it's going to be right in the fight, I think.
A
Yeah, obviously that was a big story. Was it last year that you joined the board? 25, yeah.
B
September. Yeah, End of September the stock went up from like basically 9, 10 before it was announced to 50, a little under 50.
A
And so now back, I'm looking 968.
B
So yeah, it's, it's still sitting below, well below where it opened the day after I was announced. But it's a far better company now. Right. Like the cat, the capital structure has been changed up. Right. The, the voting shares, right. The super voting shares are gone. The, the balance sheet has like 80 plus million dollars of cash and no debt. Now it's totally different than where it was before and the board has completely changed out. There was a bunch of folks that were much more compliance oriented, like not growth oriented and a lot of those folks are gone. And then we brought in people like Lynn Alden. So everything's, everything's cleaned up. We maybe most importantly we also brought in the stablecoin payments capabilities in house by completing the DTR acquisition which wasn't an easy process. But I directly, you know, helped to get that done. And I feel like, you know, at this, at this price, anywhere between eight and ten dollars. It was a really good buy. So I, I bought it for myself. If the market doesn't want it, I'll take it. Right. And actually I needed, I needed these red days. Right. Like basically we were cruising along in the last Thursday and then the market was just dumping especially for small cap equities and crypto. Friday, Monday and a little bit yesterday it kind of decelerated. And then today of course we're going to get a green day just because this move down since last Thursday night is sort of not really been based on very much. It's the same stuff as the last time I was on last March and I told your viewers in March not to flip bearish. That was right near the bottom of sentiment, right near the bottom of pricing. What did, what did the equity market do? It b bottomed right back to all time highs almost too predictably. Scott. I got to be honest, it's almost boring now because you could just fade any of these fear periods and, and get paid pretty quickly. It used to be you had to wait a while to be validated and vindicated. Now you seem to be vindicated quite quickly. As long as you stay bullish.
A
Yeah, you mentioned that your view is that you want exposure to fintech, to stablecoin infrastructure. I mean is that specifically as a board member? Obviously, but is that specifically how you view back to what they're building? That seems to be the story everywhere. For everyone. Right? They're all trying to pivot into that space.
B
Yeah, I mean look, the regulatory environment has gotten far better for companies in this sector and globally stablecoin adoption is continuing unabated. Either way, we think there's significant disruption coming to the traditional remittances businesses, the traditional banking businesses and we think the kind of neo banking players are going to have more relevance in the future and back. Just needed to do a little bit of work to clean up the business. Like we got rid of the loyalty business which was like a money losing kind of heavy, you know, business that sat there on the balance sheet and that was a lot of work to get rid of that as well. I mean all this stuff happened in the eight months since I joined the board. Many of those things were, were in progress or in flight, but they had to be completed. And so now that those things are done, it's, it's funny to me how markets work, right? Like you can, you can significantly improve a company and because the market doesn't really understand all the changes yet, the stock can trade at the same level or lower than where it was when it had a lot more issues. But that's turnarounds for you and, and you can't predict when the market will decide that those turnarounds are, are working. You can only affect the turnaround and then, and then let the market price follow over time. So I'm, look, I didn't buy 585,000 shares for fun. Right. You only, you only go on the open market and buy shares as an insider if you really believe in, in what's happening. Because it's, it's not that easy to sell. Right. So it's, it's not a trade for me. Right. It's, I really think that we have a nice run coming.
A
You imagine the stink if the next filing was that you sold it all?
B
Yeah, yeah. I would like to note for the record that I have never sold a share of iron. I've been on the board since 2021 and even though the stock went from 28 to 1 to 75 to 47 or wherever it is this morning, I haven't once sold a share. All the only thing I did was add. And I continue to believe iron is asymmetric as well, where there's a lot more upside than, than downside from my perspective. And so I'm going to continue to, to do what I've been doing up until now.
A
Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Maybe there's a good time before we dive into, I guess, some of the news, if we get there, to talk about iron and generally what's happening in the quote unquote miner space. I say quote unquote now because I don't think we're going to be calling them bitcoin miners anymore that we should. I would love your opinion on that. But obviously Marathon, you know, closed their convertible note they had made that move to become a bitcoin treasury company like Saylor, and then they ended up selling 1.5 billion to close those notes. And, you know, I think they're trailing on the pivot to AI. Iron obviously did it very early. I mean, do you view these now as bitcoin miners? They AI, you know, infrastructure companies that mine bitcoin. If they're going to even keep mining bitcoin.
B
I mean, it depends on which ones.
A
Right.
B
So the, there are a number of companies I'd put Iron, Cypher, Terra, Wolf is probably the top three from an execution standpoint so far. But like those companies have effectively become AI data center developers slash Neo clouds already. And so the fact that they mined Bitcoin or even still mine. Some de minimis amount of bitcoin going forward is sort of not really the story. The market is entirely focused on what they're building and where they're going to execute next. There are another group of companies that have said that they're going to come into this space that includes Clean Spark, you know, the former bit farms, then the others that have executed on small contracts like Riot that, that appear like they're going to get there eventually but, but haven't really executed to the same degree. They don't have as many contracts, they don't have quite as much momentum in the AI HPC space. But look like the data center space is going to be a big deal for, for decades. Right. Because it's going to take years if you start from a standing start right now to develop a new large scale data center. So these things are just going up in value. There will be periods of time where macro fear causes the repricing to the downside for short periods of time. But as I said in another, you know, live stream podcast type of thing recently, like pretty much every time they dip, not just these names but kind of anything in the sector, anytime they dip a significant amount, it's probably going to be a buying opportunity looking forward two or three years. So like on a, on a cyclical basis, like for the next 20 or 30 years, every two to three years when you get a significant dip, it's probably going to be viable for a while because this, this whole process is still in the first or second inning in terms of the build out that that's required here. And Jensen Wong and folks like that are all reiterating this. I don't know if you saw the picture of Dan Roberts, the CEO of Iron, he was hanging out with Michael Dell, CEO of Dell and Jensen Wong, CEO of Nvidia. Founders, billionaires, all founders, all billionaires, all three of them now. And you know, that's just a sign of, of things to come, I think.
A
Yeah, I just wonder what's going to happen with hash rate if we're going to see a reshuffling as kind of the dominant American players become more focused on AI. Not that it wouldn't matter. I mean it's the nature of the bitcoin network.
B
The bitcoin hash rate stayed pretty solid even during this drawdown. You would have thought with a move from 126 to 60 that the hash rate would have been cut at least 20 or 30% and it's basically flat and that shows you the anti fragility of the network the incentives allow. When some players come off, other players go on effectively. If those really big mega players start to redirect their power towards another form of compute, let's say an AI, smaller players will fill in because they still want to mine bitcoin. And I would argue even if it's not profitable right now, it might still be rational because if you're right about the scarcity of bitcoin, then if you mine bitcoin today at a loss, but it eventually is worth a million dollars a coin and you can't mine more, let's say in 100 plus years from now, maybe that's a good decision. You could argue that a lot of money was burned up chasing that this cycle. But the reality is like the biggest money went into data centers and those data centers, as long as they were repositioned, AI have actually made substantial returns for shareholders. So it all worked out in the end analysis. Basically, bitcoin mining incentivized the build out of large scale power and infrastructure that ended up being necessary even though it hasn't been particularly profitable for bitcoin this cycle. And that's the magic of bitcoin, right? It's unclear some of the times what specifically is going to happen, but the incentives are there for the, for the network to continue to operate.
A
Yeah, I find it just fascinating. And you've been on top of it the entire time. I mean I'll never forget you coming on here when iron was 12 bucks and just pounding the pounding, pounding it. And I know a lot of people, I can see them in the comments are saying that was a really good call, you know, and I've told the story of my friend who did exceptionally well as a result of the dinner where you made that call in Vegas one time. So that was a good time.
B
I hear he has a nice plane. I haven't been invited to fly on it yet.
A
So he's got three of them now. I think so, yeah. Not going too poorly but you know, moving on. Obviously the big story of the day, I just love the quick take on it, is Trump orders government fed to review crypto firms access to payment rails. So this I just, I would love to have Caitlin long on with us to talk about this because it's kind of vindication for everything she pushed for, for all these years for Custodia. But basically there's two parts to this which is that it's called the integrating financial technology innovation into regulatory framework. It directs the six federal financial regulators to overhaul fintech rules on a 90 day clock and then telling the Fed to evaluate granting crypto firms direct access to reserve bank payment rails on 120 day clock. So those who don't remember what happened with custodian Caitlin is that she's a fully reserved bank and asked for a Fed master account and was rejected, then sued the Fed and was still rejected. And now Trump is literally telling the Fed or asking the Fed since they're an independent agency to grant this access. But that would put, you know, the Kraken's, Coinbase, Robinhood's in the same conversation as the JP Morgans and such who have direct access to the Fed.
B
Yeah, Caitlin was right. Our mutual friend Caitlin has been right this whole time. And sometimes you got to fight these battles for long periods of time and, and maybe it's, maybe it's sort of like past time. Right, because like she would have benefited greatly from having this done a few years ago when she had a lead and a lot of momentum and now a lot of other folks will be able to catch up. But maybe that's not the point. She'll be fine either way. But you know, kudos to her on, on, on pushing on this over long periods of time. Like it's pretty clear that crypto is going to be fully integrated into the traditional system. There's actually no reason for it not to be. People are going to use it whether the US government gets behind it or not, whether the Fed gets behind it or not. And some of this is just a seasoning process. Like if you think back throughout the history of financial markets in the US like even equities were considered to be the rambunctious stepchildren like the wild children. Right. Like a hundred years ago, you know, a gentleman only owned bonds.
A
Right.
B
And equities now are viewed as safe compared to crypto. I think in 50 years it'll be very clear that crypto is just another asset class. There's no reason to systematically exclude it. There's no reason not to build it into the system. Anything that's better in some way will eventually be adopted. And so to me this is a natural evolution. I don't know specifically what this means in the very short term, but I think it's a good environment for companies like Bakkt. Again, another reason why I made a large investment this week.
A
Yeah, I mean the next point I was going to make is imagine what this does for supercharging stablecoins, which we know is a major priority for The White House and for the Treasury. Right. For various reasons. I mean, it's a weapon of hyper dollarization in a world where, you know, people are trying to reduce exposure to the dollars or at least sovereign nations are. So I mean, if you give full Fed access to every fintech and crypto based company, stable coins are just going to continue to explode even further.
B
Yeah, look, Trump has not had the best relationship with the banks. I mean he, I think he's pretty annoyed to the banks for not getting clarity figured out with Brian Armstrong faster. You could see the influence that stablecoins have in the US Government. Like when I was at Mar a Lago, whenever that was a month, month and a half ago, I was standing right next to Paolo from Tether and he was standing right next to Bo Hinds, one of the, one of the crypto guys that was sort of in the administration there for a little bit. Now he's sort of a lobbyist. And right after Trump got off stage, he took Paolo behind the rope to have like a private one on one conversation with Trump in front of the rest of the room. Right as Trump was leaving to get on the plane to go up to the press dinner where they had the attacker try to break in. Same day earlier in that afternoon we were all with, with Trump and you could see like he's the only guy in the room that was allowed that audience. And, and it speaks to the influence that that Tether and other stablecoin manufacturers have with the government right now because they're viewed as like one of the primary buyers of treasuries in a world where a lot of people have said we're not going to buy treasuries any anymore. A lot of, a lot of governments are sort of have become adversarial with the U.S. and so these stablecoin companies are helping to proliferate the dollar globally. There are natural demand for the dollar. And by the way, just like a few days later, I saw Paolo again with Bo Hines and they were standing right next to Steve Mnuchin, the former treasury secretary under Trump. In fact, Steve Mnuchin couldn't even get into the club that I'm a member of. So we went and talked to my buddy and I went and talked to the membership director and say, hey, that's the former treasury secretary. You should probably give him a tour while you're waiting for the, the Canter people to get here to open the party. Sailor got turned away at the door too. Sailor and Minutian are standing outside this club and and my buddy and I were able to get someone to bring them in. And so like it's it. But it's wild though. You see these guys and it was like we're up on the balcony and it's like sailor Minutian Bow Hines, Paolo. And like you can see the connectivity that stablecoins are having now not just with, with the biggest bitcoin holders, but also with the US government directly. And I think that's just a sign of things to come.
A
What's so interesting about that is Tether doesn't have all of the clarity that they are necessarily seeking in the genius act, or at least that's the perception. So it's interesting that he's the guy in the room who's getting that audience when people who read the genius act, you know, for the first time think it's more favorable to a circle, for example, or you know, a United States native stablecoin company, Tether, hasn't even announced their official plans, I don't think for what they're going to do in the States. And still a lot of platforms don't use Tether here.
B
Look, I personally have not been super positive on Tether historically. I mean, I think you can objectively say that they weren't the most transparent company for many years. They couldn't, they could not pass an audit. They were certainly short on reserves for long periods of time. They did a lot of business with firms like Celsius historically. Right? So like, that is what it is. It's funny I say that and people jump all over. Mike hates Tether. He's a tether. Truth or he thinks Tether's gonna go down. I never once said that. I just, I like to be as objective as possible. And, and so even if I, whether I like or don't like something, I try to be aware of what's going on with it. And look, Tether's probably in a much better place than it was five years ago. And it was never really a huge risk of, of sort of collapsing because there's really no easy way to redeem. Like nobody's trying to go to a window somewhere in Italy and redeem tethers, right? Like for dollars. So like it wasn't going to be easy even if there was a demand to do that, to do that. Whereas some of these other platforms, like all it took was a run on the bank effectively for people to say, hey, I want my money back. For people to realize, oh, these firms didn't have, didn't have the money. So you wanted to be really big and you didn't want to have a redemption mechanism and tether survived some of those moments and now is trying to sort of legitimize itself. And I think Paul is doing exactly what you should do. You should cozy up with the US government and try to convince them that you've always been legitimate, whether you have or not.
A
And that's why they hired Bo Hines to run the US Side in the first place right out of the White House.
B
Bo Hines probably makes real money now being, being a lobbyist. That's why everybody wants to work. You, you wonder why someone wants to work in the government for 200,000 a year. It's because you make 2, you make 2 million a year or 20 million a year the moment you leave because you've got influence, it's influence pedaling. It's, it's a story as old as time.
A
It was unbelievable how fast he made that transition though. It was the like most meteoric rise I've ever seen.
B
So listen, nobody's, nobody's ever heard of the guy before, but he's a good looking American guy. And you throw a suit on him and say he's a crypto guy, right? Like nobody knew who he was, but once he was that guy, every crypto company had to talk to him. So it's magic how that happens.
A
Yeah, it was incredible. What do you think of bitcoin here?
B
I don't think anything's changed. I mean It's. What is it, 774 or something? Like it was, it was, it was 60 on February. It was 59.8 at the lows on like February 4th during that whoosh down that basically predicted the Iran conflict. We're coming up on three months or more than three months now into that February, March, April, yeah, like four or five months into it and, and bitcoin's still sitting above those lows pretty substantially. It went as high as 82.83. I suspect at some point later this year like it, it'll go higher. I think the four year cycle people are, are sort of in shambles at this point because if you hadn't seen, if you haven't seen more downward momentum by now, it's more likely this is early mid cycle than it is at the end of the cycle. But we'll see either way, like, you know, I've been long strive, I got long strive, like October last year and people are yelling at me, they're so angry and I'm, I'm up 30% or something. On my stride position, I also bought the SATA, the, the, the preferred equity from STR Daily Dividend starting mid next month, 13%. My original average was under 94. Like once you start receiving the yield, right, like the, the, the, the cost basis actually drops organically because it's a return of capital. So it's, it's falling. But I, I think it's going to be hard to say no to an income product where retirees can see new cash coming into their bank account or their brokerage account every single day. Right? One of the big challenges retirees have is you go from like a bi weekly paycheck, right, To a sometimes quarterly paycheck. Let's say a lot of your money's in dividend paying equities, MLPs, energy stocks, whatever, tobacco stocks, those stocks are great, but they, you only get the dividend once every quarter. And so what happens is over time is your income becomes very lumpy. So you might have an average of 10,000amonth of income, but some months it's 12 and some months it's 4. And of course retirees get better at balancing that over time. But a product like SATA from Strive allows you to kind of balance that out. Very high income paid every business day. First security in history that I know of, that, that pays out to the holders every, every business day. And so my suspicion is the demand is going to go up, it's going to trade above par and Strive is going to be one of the biggest bitcoin holders in the world when bitcoin's at much higher prices. So like I remind you, Scott, that I was just like you, I was a little bit skeptical last spring, right? I was very bearish on Nakamoto and a bunch of these other treasury companies. I thought they could go a lot lower. But once that process had played out, I, I switched sides, right, because that's what a good investor does. Like, you wait till all of the sentiment has been squeezed out of the balloon and then you pile in then. So I came in then and we had a little bit more volatility coming into this year. But now Strive looks like it's on solid ground. It looks like a clear number two in my opinion to mstr. It's the only other company that has a, a momentum, momentum around their, their preferred equity right now. It's hard to issue a new one right now. The demand may not be there. You need a billion dollar plus market cap. I suspect that they'll just keep moving up the list. They're Going to pass Riot. They're going to pass a number of other firms on there, and at one point, I think they'll be number two behind msdr.
A
I met Matt Cole two weeks ago in Miami. Such an incredibly impressive guy, the CEO of Strive, because I did like five minutes of due diligence before I sat down with him, and I think he had like 11 consecutive years beating the benchmark as a, you know, bond investor, like, really, you know, with massive, massive capital behind him. You know, he's a really impressive guy. How do you view SATA vs. STRC at this point? I think last week's talked you held both, is that correct? No, no, no.
B
I've never. I've never held strc. I think they're both gonna work, right? Like, STRC is much less risky because the balance sheet of MSTR is so large. So probably SATA should trade, you know, a slightly larger gap like it should be. It should be higher relative to strc. But I think what's going to happen is STRC is probably gonna need to raise the yield a little bit more and. Or go. Go to a faster payment cadence. Like clearly going from monthly. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. They probably can end up daily as well, if they can. I don't. I don't know what, what constraints it would be around that. But if they can do that, they probably end up daily as well to match the. The same cadence. And then they may in the short term have to raise the yield a little bit. But look, if you can keep your. If you can keep these instruments near par for most of the month, and then you win. And so I think STRC proved that you could do that before SEDA did. And now, now SATA looks like it's. It's holding that near par level much earlier in the month, like after the ex. Dividend or date than. Than it had previously. So I think the behavior showing that people want these things, there's a tremendous amount of demand, and then all you need is bitcoin over time to go up, you know, 15 or 20%.
A
Yeah, I mean, then you crush it. But, I mean, Sailor said 2%, I think is, you know, then they're. They're fine.
B
Yeah, if you, if you, if you're willing to cannibalize yourself, then. Then, you know, you could tolerate lower returns for some period of time. But for this to really be a truly an accretive flywheel, you want bitcoin to go up 20 or 30% a year. But I think it will. Yeah, like over 10 years. I think that's a pretty reasonable bet. In the meantime, if you bought it as I did months ago. Now, every month that you get the return of capital, it sort of de risks the investment as long as the, the instrument trades back to par. Think about it like if, if you're at a hundred and you keep getting a dollar a month and it keeps going back to 100, every time you put that dollar in your pocket, that's basically downside protection against the risk that at some point these things don't trade at 100, but I think they will. I think they're going to trade at 100, especially SATA, because it's daily, it's going to trade at 100, like all the time. And then you're going to be getting your yield return of capital all the time, like every single day. So the process of de risking and getting that track record of payment is going to happen at an accelerated pace. Sort of like think about how Bitcoin trades 24, 7, 365. So it's actually traded way more than a lot of equities.
A
Right.
B
Because over the same period of time, 16, 17 years, it's traded way more hours and way more minutes than a lot of other asset classes. Well, SATA is going to develop a track record of payments that's going to rival, you know, dividend aristocrats that have paid for decades because it's actually going to make more dividend payments, more return of capital payments in a short period of months than a lot of those stocks have made in many years. Right. Because they're effectively doing say 22 or 23 or 24 or 25amonth, not 12 a year or, or 4 a year, like a quarterly payer. Right. So they're going to do more in a month than some of these other ones do in a couple of, of years, three, four years. Right. So I think that accelerates this like, sense of inevitability that the market will have. And, and look, if you're embarrassed on bitcoin here, it better be for like a week, right? Or, or like a short period of time. And again, I don't even understand what the point of that would be because nobody can break the next week or next two weeks. I think if you look out two, three, four years, though, bitcoin's higher, there will be another cycle that actually gets people excited. And the fact that almost nobody's excited right now is perversely quite bullish.
A
Yeah, I think that you made the best point, which is that Well, I think Saylor found that strc, through all of his iterations of attempts at finding products that he could put out there to buy Bitcoin has been the best one. And I think that Strive was just the fastest to innovate on that. And anyone who's not doing that specifically specific product, even Sailor said to me when I was in Vegas, he said, I wish I had done this first. Right. He's like, it took me all these other things to get to doing this, but this is the way and this is what we're. That's the benefit of all their debt and is just doing this. Yeah.
B
And that's the benefit of being a fast follower. Like, if you think about a long endurance race, like you don't want to be out in front the whole time, you actually want to draft off the leader for some period of time so you can quietly decide what, what your strategy is going to be to try to pass 75 or 80 or 90% through the race and you just let the leader carry you. And so because Strive came later and some of the strategy was already laid down, they were able to draft, draft, draft, and now they're actually accelerating because they see a window to really differentiate. And so I look, somebody asked me, another hedge fund manager when I was in Palm beach recently said, how of all of these, all the noise in the treasury space last year, how did you pick out Strive? And I said it was the same process I used to pick out iron and cipher out of a pool of 30 or 40 so called Bitcoin miners three or four years ago. Like, if you actually talk to all these teams and you ask yourself, forget about the fervor around the price, but just focus on does the team have the capabilities to execute on the business model that they're saying? It was very clear to me over a year ago now, last spring, that like almost nobody was going to be able to do this. Well, that you can't just take an event planner or party planner, a social media influencer, give them 2 or $300 million to buy Bitcoin in the open market and expect that real shareholder value would be created. You actually needed a team that was capable of really innovating in this securities issuance space where you have to issue securities with certain characteristics that meet the market's need, but also allow the company itself to be sustainable so the equity value can go up. And so my assessment of that after looking at the market last spring was that Strive is probably the only company other than MSTR which had the Right. Capabilities to be successful in this market. But you still needed to wait until the air kind of went out of the bubble. Once that happened, I went to work last spring and bought Strive. And I got a lot of hate for that at the time. And now the haters are largely gone. And this is what happens over markets. If you're right, I got the same with Iron, right. People are like, Mike, you're an idiot. Iron's $2. You've been wrong. And then when it went to 75 or nowhere, right. And they'll, they're here a little bit right now because we're at 47 or 48, not. Not 75. But when it's. When it's higher again, they'll. They'll be quiet. And so I just learned to. You tune it out, right? You just focus on executing on your strategy.
A
Love it, man. Well, thank you. I appreciate, as always, all the insight. Now I feel like just like I bought Iron, I'm gonna need to go buy backed.
B
Yeah. Look, I have no recommendation for anybody to buy, but I'm only telling you what I did. I was a buyer on Friday and Monday between 820 and 834 a share where my average is. I think my average on all the whole purchase was like 829, which coincidentally is my average on. On the whole position now. 625, 000 shares in the fund. So that's what I did. We'll see if I'm right. I have a decent track record. But like time will tell.
A
I mean, you don't have to ask anybody's advice when they can actually show you what they did. That's the beauty of. That's the beauty of following someone's who can show you that they actually have skin in the game as opposed to most of us are just, you know, say maybe this, that at any given time. Love it, man. Well, thank you, Mike. Always a pleasure. Love, love what you're doing and look forward to having another chat soon.
B
Sounds good. Thanks, Scott.
A
All right, man. We. We had a issue with getting live today, so I'm gonna have to try to get us off here. All right, man. Have a good one. Let's do. Let's do. Let's dope. Foreign.
C
You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried this summer. It's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your summer@columbia.com to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome. Columbia engineered for whatever.
Podcast: The Wolf Of All Streets
Host: Scott Melker
Guest: Mike Alfred
Date: May 20, 2026
In this episode, Scott Melker hosts investor and board member Mike Alfred for a deep-dive into current market catalysts, including former President Trump’s executive order on crypto firms' access to the Fed, the evolution of Bitcoin miner companies into AI infrastructure, stablecoins' growing influence in U.S. policy, and key investment strategies in the shifting fintech landscape. The conversation is heavily focused on company turnarounds (notably Bakkt and Iron/Iron Mountain), the maturing relationship between crypto companies and federal regulators, and the opportunities unlocked by the rise of AI and stablecoin innovations.
“At this price, anywhere between eight and ten dollars. It was a really good buy.” (02:15)
“You want to be in the stable Coin Payments neo banking space… that whole space is gonna heat up quite a bit.” (00:57)
“Those companies have effectively become AI data center developers slash Neo clouds already… The market is entirely focused on what they're building and where they're going to execute next.” (07:00)
“Pretty much every time they dip, not just these names but kind of anything in the sector, anytime they dip a significant amount, it's probably going to be a buying opportunity looking forward two or three years.” (08:06)
“It's pretty clear that crypto is going to be fully integrated into the traditional system. There's actually no reason for it not to be.” (12:42)
“These stablecoin companies are helping to proliferate the dollar globally. There are natural demand for the dollar.” (15:19)
“You can see the connectivity that stablecoins are having now not just with…the biggest bitcoin holders, but also with the US government directly.” (16:00)
“Bo Hines probably makes real money now being, being a lobbyist… It’s influence peddling. It’s a story as old as time.” (18:23)
“If you look out two, three, four years, though, bitcoin's higher, there will be another cycle that actually gets people excited.” (25:41)
“My suspicion is the demand is going to go up, it's going to trade above par and Strive is going to be one of the biggest bitcoin holders in the world when bitcoin's at much higher prices.” (21:19)
On Insider Conviction:
“You only go on the open market and buy shares as an insider if you really believe in, in what's happening. Because it's, it's not that easy to sell. Right. So it's, it's not a trade for me.”
— Mike Alfred [04:55]
On Stablecoins and Political Influence:
“You could see the influence that stablecoins have in the US Government… [Tether CEO Paolo] was allowed that audience. And, and it speaks to the influence that Tether and other stablecoin manufacturers have with the government right now because they're viewed as one of the primary buyers of treasuries in a world where a lot of people have said we're not going to buy treasuries any more.”
— Mike Alfred [14:16]
On Market Cycles and Bitcoin’s Anti-Fragility:
“When some players come off, other players go on effectively… The incentives are there for the network to continue to operate.”
— Mike Alfred [09:13]
On Adapting as an Investor:
“That's what a good investor does. Like, you wait till all of the sentiment has been squeezed out of the balloon and then you pile in then.”
— Mike Alfred [21:52]
On Innovation in Crypto Dividends:
“SATA is going to develop a track record of payments that's going to rival, you know, dividend aristocrats that have paid for decades because it's actually going to make more dividend payments... in a short period of months than a lot of those stocks have made in many years.”
— Mike Alfred [25:20]
Mike Alfred and Scott Melker paint a picture of a rapidly maturing crypto ecosystem:
The episode provides timely, pragmatic insight for investors and anyone tracking the intersection of fintech, regulation, AI, and digital assets.